


Echoes of Infinity

by lifeofsnark



Category: Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: F/M, Gooood shit, I think about palpatine, Rey is fierce, Soulmate AU, a look at The Force Awakens, and The Last Jedi, canonverse, episode IX speculation, feeling their feelings across the stars, just lonely space babies being emotional together, kylo is conflicted, palps shows back up for a hot minute, that's a fun word association, through a soulmate lense, whenever I hear about antibiotic resistant venereal disease
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-19
Updated: 2019-07-28
Packaged: 2020-07-08 19:42:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19875034
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lifeofsnark/pseuds/lifeofsnark
Summary: Before his death, Snoke had claimed that it had been his own power that had connected Rey with Kylo. Supposedly the old creature had known that Rey’s curiosity and power and acceptance would draw Kylo to her, and her to him, and so Snoke had used the Force  to link them. Perhaps that was possible.Or, maybe, something else was at play. Had two powerful Force users ever been selected by the fickle entity that governed soul bonds? Kylo would find out soon enough.AKA, the one where Rey and Kylo's soulbond is the thing that saves not only their own lives, but those of everyone living in a galaxy far, far away.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [takearisk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/takearisk/gifts).



It reverberates in him, this stranger’s pain. 

Its taste is familiar now, coppery and warm, and barely distracts him from his task. He’s used to pain, both his and this distant, fated  _ other’s _ . He’d felt it the summer he turned fifteen, an aching across his palms and throbbing in his knees. He’d spent the day twitchy; rubbing his hands down the thighs of his pants and occasionally pulling up the leg of his trousers to check that no, he still wasn’t bleeding. 

His-  _ Han Solo-  _ had noticed, and Han Solo, in a move that had become predicable for the man, backed away from the problem and left it to his wife. 

Leia Organa had been pleased, her cheeks rosy and hands warm. She’d taken her son’s hand in her smaller ones and told him that he’d been chosen, that his soulmate was out there somewhere, that their fates were entwined: from this day forward they would share pain and pleasure, triumph and strife. 

It didn’t mean that they’d be  _ happy.  _ It only meant they weren’t alone. 

(Ben Solo’s former parents had been soulmates. In the end, it hadn’t helped them.)

Kylo’s head rings, his skull aching, and yet he walks on, his boots falling steadily against the seamless floor of the Supremacy. Nav techs and storm troopers and communications experts avert their eyes and step out of his way, turning their faces to the endless, cold darkness beyond the ship and leaving him only with row after row of stiff backs to pass. 

It’s better this way, though he feels no sense of victory. He’d wanted to be respected. Wanted to be untouchable. And now he was, save for the throbbing of a headache that did not belong to him. 

“Apprentice,” Snoke hummed as the doors to the throne room boomed shut. The sound no longer sent fear skittering over his skin. Kylo had presented with the Force even before his birth, and he’d spent the following twenty nine years learning to control himself. Kylo’s body was his own, and he ruled over it with the same unfeeling determination that he used to control his knights, and his ships, and his dream.

“Remove the helmet, please,” said Snoke, and Kylo moved to obey.

“Why do you persist?” Snoke asked, cocking his head slowly. He did everything slowly, like he was moving through water as the rest of the galaxy drifted through air (or the suffocating lack thereof.)

“Master?” The word was familiar and bitter on his tongue. 

“With the mask. You no longer require the punishment.”

No, Kylo had outgrown the punishment of the vision-restricting helm years ago. “It reminds me that I am not of the people,” he told Snoke, carefully keeping his mind clear. “I am other. I am the Force; I am a power.”

“So you are,” said Snoke, still calculating. He studied Kylo for a long moment, and so Kylo stayed bowed low, a slow ache building in the knee he had pressed to the dark, hard floor. 

“You are pained,” said Snoke eventually. 

“It is nothing,” said Kylo, letting his mind drift from thoughts and resentment of his vulnerability. 

“Hmm,” Snoke mused, and Kylo knew he wasn’t fooled. He never was, though sometimes he chose to pretend. “The Resistance has been active in the Jakku System. There are rumors of… intelligence. Hints that could lead to Skywalker’s location.”

“There is nothing in Jakku,” said Kylo. “Master, that system has been swept. There is no sign of Skywalker.”

“Nevertheless,” said Snoke, and he drew the word out into low, bleeding syllables. “The rebellion must be crushed, and so I am sending you, my young apprentice. Your ... _ gifts,  _ will serve you well.”

“As you desire,” he said, shifting in preparation for ending this audience with their Supreme Leader. 

“One last thing,” said Snoke, and Kylo forced himself to bow his head respectfully, the smothering thunder of Snoke’s Force signature something Kylo had long ago learned not to disobey. 

“Your soul-bond,” Snoke asked. “Have you yet broken it?”

“It’s too strong,” said Kylo, bitterness pooling like acidic rain on every word. “It cannot be broken while they yet live.”  _ Was it fate that had given him such a strong soulmate? Was it the Force? Whatever energy ruled soul bonds, it was a cruel and fickle entity, with humor dark enough to match his own.  _

“You know what you must do,” said Snoke. 

Kylo’s fingers tightened ever so subtly on the helm he held at his side. “I do.”

Snoke leaned closer, the stiff brocade of his robe sussurating like scales on warm stone. “Will it hurt you, young Solo? Will you pine for a bond unfulfilled?”

“No.”

He’d spoken too quickly, and now looked upon the grimace that passed as Snoke’s smile. “Your father,” he said. “Han Solo… he mourns to this day for your mother, though she yet lives.”

“He isn’t my father,” said Kylo through his teeth. “Ben Solo is dead.”

“Yet I do not think he is,” said Snoke, his voice resonating up to the high vaults of the throne room, the sibilant consonants pooling there like the lost prayers of the damned. “Your soulmate lives, and there is too much of your father in you, young one. A Solo would never kill the other half of his heart.”

Kylo’s knee ached, his head throbbed with the ghost of some clumsy kriffer’s pain, and he hated himself, and Snoke, and the family names that yet tied him to his past. “I have no heart,” he said, and pushed himself to his feet. 

“Careful, apprentice,” said Snoke, eyeing him with cold amusement. “Hubris was the sin of the Jedi.”

And that quickly it was too much: the aches that were his ever-present companion, the burnt rubber smell of Snoke’s presence, the patronising, the feeling of perpetual entrapment, the expanding black hole that had become his future. Kylo turned on his heel and stalked from the throne room before he was dismissed, and as he walked he could hear Snoke’s laughter ringing in his ears, warped and smothering and inescapable

As Kylo stalked through the Supremacy, shoving everyone and everything out of his way, a thought flitted through his mind like a shark through deep water: a rippling shadow that was there and gone again. He thought that the more he tried to escape his life- his name, his lineage, his kriffing soulmate- the more tightly they bound him. What good was the legacy of his grandfather is if(?) Kylo could never escape all that came with it?

He’d make finding his soulmate his top priority, Kylo decided as he sank into the pilot’s seat of his command shuttle. And when he found them, he’d kill them.

~~~

Heat shouldn’t have a smell. Heat shouldn’t have a smell, but it  _ did.  _

Rey kicked at the sand beneath her as she walked back to her AT-AT, the early-afternoon sun burning the inside of her eyeballs and sending sweat rolling down the inside of her face-cloth. It was a miracle her goggles hadn’t fogged up yet. 

Sand sifted down the dune ridge, hissing as it went, and Rey walked on, wondering how you described the smell of the desert sun.  _ Metal hot enough to burn,  _ she decided as she surfed down the lee slope of the dune.  _ Dust, acidic dust.  _

She’d be back in her AT-AT soon, and she’d saved enough of her water ration to  _ wash  _ tonight. She could already feel her skin shivering in anticipation. 

Heat smelled like something else, too. Metal, and sour dust and… what? 

_ Salt,  _ she decided. Salt like sweat. 

(And in the dark, when the tick marks on the wall seemed to mock her, the desert smelled like tears, too.)

She was one long stretch of searingly bright sand from home when  _ rage  _ washed through her. It wasn’t hers: nothing had happened here. No, this rage belonged to the  _ other,  _ and it was happening more and more frequently. It was a physical presence inside her, these emotions of an unknown man. Her jaw hurt where he’d clenched his; her knuckles throbbed, and a persistent, sickly ache set up camp behind one eye. 

Used to this, she didn’t slow her footsteps across the ever-shifting sand. Instead she hunched her shoulders and walked on, ducking inside the gloom of her wreck. Her portion was as tasteless as it ever was, and she watched the sky fade to lavender as she munched, turning the world orange with the visor of her old helmet. She liked the helmet- it promised adventure. (It promised bravery.)

She brooded and watched the sky darkened and refused to think of her parents, to wonder if tomorrow would be the day they came back-

Right up until she heard the high-pitched wailing of ...something. 

It was tempting to ignore the cry; to ignore the terror of whatever was on the other side of the tall ridge of sand as the anger of another rattled in her skull like a loose bolt in an old compressor. This wasn’t her problem. This wasn’t her rage. 

But because the bad mood wasn’t hers, she ran up the every-slippery crest of the dune and looked down at whatever she’d see below. 

The screamer was a droid, whistling in panic and righteous indignation, netted to a brown-stained luggabeast. 

“Teedo, you kriffing whoreson,” Rey yelled, skidding down the dune towards the lumbering junker. “That droid isn’t yours and you know it!” In some ways it felt good to vent her anger, to yell in the  _ exceedingly  _ anger-conducive language of the native desert junkers. 

The droid, sensing that help had come, wailed louder, drowning out Teedo’s response. It was the work of a minute to have the little astromech droid down from the netting, and he rolled behind her immediately. 

After a bit of bitching the Teedo moved off for less argumentative prey, and Rey was left alone in the deep-evening gloom with the orange and cream droid. When she’d been very young one of the older women had given her an orange and cream swirled candy that dissolved on her tongue, and for one giddy, heat-struck second Rey was tempted to swipe her tongue right over the droid, dirt and all. 

“Well,” said Rey, that persistent throb of a sun-touched headache still pounding behind her left eye. “Off you go.”

The droid whistled at her, almost bashful. “I can’t help you,” said Rey, smiling despite herself. 

It was no use arguing. It turned out BB-8 was nearly as stubborn as she was, and in the end he followed her home, chirping happily and complimenting how she fixed his antennae. He was ebullient, friendly and cheerful, and despite the dark brooding presence that lingered in the back of her mind, Rey fell asleep with a smile curving her lips, the joy that she found all her own. 

~~~

Time: for years time had gently rolled past Rey like sand on the crest of a dune- perpetual and rough, his down the ages. It had blurred all together, the minutes and hours and days comprising the empty desert of Rey’s life. One day was very much like the next, and that one went on like the day before. If not for the ever-growing collection of tick marks on her wall ( _ soft-faded silver like scars _ ) she might be able to forget that time was passing at all.

For Rey time was routine, until it wasn’t. 

She’d met a Stormtrooper turned Resistance fighter; she’d met Han Solo and had flown  _ the  _ Millennium Falcon; she’d seen deep green endless forests and had had visions that she refused to think about. 

And then, in trees taller than hulks, she’d met  _ him:  _ the dark monster from her nightmares. And he’d taken her. 

She’d been in scrapes before, but none so dire as this. She’d just woken strapped to a steel chair, and the black beast from her dreams was seated across from her, still and ominous as death. 

“Where am I?” It was an obvious question maybe, and the answer wouldn’t matter. The First Order could spirit her away at lightspeed and anyone would be powerless to stop them. In space travel, time and location were human concepts applied to the unknowable vastness of the dark. Still, it was better than asking  _ who are you?  _ because she did not care. She didn’t need to know anything about this creature other than his monsterhood. 

“Does it matter?” asked that computerized voice from within the mask. 

Rey glared. 

“You still want to kill me.”   
  


Yes, she did. His calm, almost inflectionless comment only brought back that surge of white-hot fury she’d felt in the woods when she’d run from him, when he’d paralyzed her with the Force, when all she’d wanted in the whole world was to feel his blood, hot and fresh, on her fingers. It was something she’d learned early, before her memory had settled into the staid patterns of adulthood:  _ everything bled.  _ Machines bled critical fuels and lubricants; living creatures bled blood, metallic and hot; little trading stations bled loss when consumer interest shifted; her backup stores bled dry when pickings were slim. 

Everything bled. 

That meant this creature could bleed, too. 

“You don’t fight it, do you?” he asked. “The Dark Side. You call to it so naturally, so… childishly.”

“I’m not a child.”

“Oh,” said the masked man, leaning towards her just an inch. “I know you aren’t a child. And yet… you call to the Force so openly, so ...trustingly. In the forest you reached for it to resist me and now- you want to hurt me.”

“Well,” said Rey, taking a long breath in through her nose, trying to keep her tone as disinterested as his, “That’s what happens when you’re being hunted by a creature in a mask.” She was tempted to ask him more questions about the Force, about why he thought she had it. She wouldn’t ask, though. Likely anything he told her would be a lie.

Suddenly he stood, taller than she’d remembered, a black column of dark body armor and shining plastique. Almostly roughly he yanked off the helm, and oh- this was worse. Seeing his face, his  _ very human face,  _ was worse than talking with the mask. It was easy to imagine drawing his blood when he’d looked more like a machine than a man, but this- this was so much worse. 

He was pale, as most people were who spent much time in deep space. His hair was dark, thick, and over-long: not long enough to be tied back off of his neck and away from his face, but too long for practicality in the desert or in a fight. It would only get in the way. (Rey knew that from experience.)

What made his face interesting and human were the angles. His nose jutted proudly away from beneath the smooth plane of his forehead, and his jawline was peppered with dark freckles and moles. His cheekbones were broad, and their shape was echoed in the full, pink softness of his mouth. It almost wasn’t fair that a man so physically imposing would have a mouth like that. 

In the back of her mind she could feel the soul-bond stirring, little bursts of happiness and curiosity that  _ definitely  _ weren’t Rey’s. It was jarring, feeling someone else’s emotions when she was trapped in a fark cave of a room with a man whose name was usually whispered in fear.

Kylo Ren (for that was his name, a name that went so well with this shocking face) slammed his helm down in a pit of ashes and stalked closer to Rey’s position in the interrogation chair. 

“Tell me about the droid.” His command was calm, almost soft. 

_ Easy,  _ Rey thought to herself, squashing down the feelings still tickling her soul-bond.  _ I can talk specs all day.  _ “He’s a BB unit with a selenium drive and a-”

“He’s carrying a section of a navigational chart,” Kylo interrupted. “We have the rest, pieced together from the remains of the Empire, and we need the last section. And somehow you convinced the droid to show it to you. You- a scavenger.”

“Maybe I asked nicely,” said Rey, pouring all the acidic sweetness she could into the words. “Did you try saying please?” 

He ignored her barb. “You know I can take whatever I want,” he said, his voice soft. It wasn’t a threat, it was a statement of fact, and both of them knew it. 

He moved smoothly, like a predator, leaning over Rey’s chair and holding his palm close to her left temple. “You’re so lonely,” he said as smoothly as one reading from a familiar book. “So afraid to leave.”

His fingers flexed, and the intense pressure in her skull only increased-

~~~

Kylo locked his knees against the onslaught of pain pressing against his skull, trying to escape the confines of bone and skin the way overripe pimfruit would burst on the vine. It was disorienting the way drowning was disorienting: painful, with no sense of reason or direction, just burning lungs and shrieking nerves and limbs that seemed to belong to you no longer. 

It was coming from the girl, he knew it was: he could see prismatic bursts of light off sand, could taste hunger and stale, long-stored water. There were too many emotions and sensations overwhelming her to tease them all apart, but he recognized the black, fraying emotions on the edge of the anguish because it was his: they were sharing this agony, reflecting it into each other like inward-facing mirrors, rebounding their disorientation and confusion and agony into each other over and over again, echoes of a painful infinity. 

It took more strength that Kylo thought he had to drop his hand away from her, severing their connection-

Only it didn’t break. Not completely. 

“You,” said the girl, said Rey, panting hard. “All this time, all that anger, it was you.”

Kylo blinked at her in horror, remembering his last conversation with Snoke: he’d promised to kill her, had resolved to kill off this one final vulnerability that could yet fell him. He’d kill his soulmate and then he’d be as impervious as any dark-side practitioner should be. He wouldn’t make his grandfather’s mistake, nor those of his parents. He’d stand alone in a world of pairs, his heard untouchable by human means.    
  
The confusion, the loneliness, the longing: it was supposed to die with his soulmate. It should end with them. 

And now he’d found her, and he didn’t think he’d be able to kill her. Not today. Maybe not ever. 

He wasn’t going to be able to kill her because, in a searing, cold-hot realization, he knew that he wanted her. He wanted her curiosity, he wanted what he assumed was her clumsiness (based on all the times she’d hurt her hands and shins); he wanted to lick the sun from her gold-soaked skin and he wanted to teach her to use the Force with all the natural talent and openness that lurked inside her. 

He wanted her. And because he wanted her, she had to die.

“It doesn’t matter,” the girl was saying, her tawny-bright eyes hot and locked on his. “It doesn’t matter that- that we’re bonded somehow. You’re still-”

“What?” Kylo asked, trying to breathe through the inexplicable hurt. “A monster?”

“Yes,” she hissed, baring her teeth. She was feral, his scavenger, and he liked that about her. He liked everything about her. If he took her would she bite him? Would she kiss him with his blood on her teeth?

He looked down into her face, so clear and expressive and furious, and tried to reach a decision. 

He should kill her. ( _ He should love her. _ )

Kylo didn’t reach a decision. He was interrupted by his father’s arrival. (He was interrupted by his father’s death.)


	2. Chapter 2

_ She’d never known it could be like this.  _

Even in the midst of battle, even with burning plastique filling her nose with acrid smoke and the smell of blood coating her throat like thick, dark wine, Rey was able to marvel at her bond with Kylo. 

They’d never willingly opened the bond. Not until Snoke was laying in two smoldering parts at the base of his throne and even then it hadn’t been conscious. Then they’d just… reached for each other, stretched their senses across the bond the way they’d once reached outstretched hands across the galaxy. 

For one heady, bewildering moment Rey hadn’t been sure if she was a two-armed woman or a four armed creature of destruction, able to channel life and death at a thought. She and Kylo were suspended, paused on the knife-edge of something greater than the sum of their parts, and then they were themselves again, moving like a perfectly balanced machine, always able to feel where the other was. 

The fight- it was everything Rey had ever dreamed of in the dark subconscious of her mind. 

She didn’t have to hold herself back, didn’t have to keep track of who was watching her, who might see that she wasn’t quite normal. It was the beautiful pull of her muscles, it was the reaction time of her hands, it was the low, throbbing hum of her saber as she separated limbs from bodies and weapons from hands. She was tapped into something larger than herself, for she could feel Ben there too, seeped in the life and death and creation and destruction that was the Force in this cavernous, burning red room. 

And then, as suddenly as it began- the  _ other  _ drained away, leaving only Rey in her sore and sweaty body in a smoky, stinking room. Ben was panting too, his massive chest heaving like the junksmith’s bellows, and for a moment they were ...only themselves. Just Ben and Rey: no family history, no opposing sides of a too-long war, no baggage. 

For a moment, with blood still trickling over the obsidian floor, there was hope. 

And then Ben turned, his sweat-dampened form backlit by the burning walls, and Rey  _ knew.  _ She knew what was coming, and felt tears pricking her eyes even as he opened his mouth to speak. 

“Stay with me,” he said, his voice low and urgent. “Stay. Together we can fix the mistakes of the Jedi. We can rule, together.”

“Don’t do this, Ben,” Rey whispered, feeling the first tears rolling down her cheeks. She could feel his own desire and determination in the back of her mind, and it was only amplifying her own longing. She didn’t know how long she could resist him like this, because to resist him was to resist herself. 

He’d known that all she wanted was a teacher; was information about the massive galaxy that had spun above her head for so long. 

He knew she’d used the Dark side of the Force as well as the Light, and he’d never judged her for it. 

He knew what it was like to be alone. 

And above all, Kylo- no, Ben- had never lied to her. Her parents had lied, Plutt had lied, Han Solo has lied, and the Resistance had lied, and yet Ben- the dark, broken, outcast man standing before her now… he’d given her only the truth. 

“Rey,” he said, his lips tightening on all the things unsaid, all the longings that were flooding into her head until she thought she would drown in them. “Rey. Please.”

It was the  _ please  _ that nearly broke her. 

Under all the bewilderment and anger and regret that was Kylo Ren, Ben Solo yet lived. Kylo Ren would knock her out, or order her to stay, or tell her that nothing mattered but the two of them. 

Ben Solo was the one saying please, and it broke Rey’s heart. 

She wanted him: wanted his empathy, wanted his knowledge, wanted those big hands against her. She wanted the future that she’d been afraid to accept for so, so long, and yet-

“I can’t do this,” she told him.  _ I can’t help grind the galaxy a little further into despair. I can’t turn my back on my friends, the first friend I’ve ever had. I can’t follow you there.  _

She loved him. She knew that now, as her heart cracked in her chest. She loved him, but she loved herself too. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if she stayed.

“Rey-”

They didn’t give a voice to all the things humming in the air between them. They didn’t need to. As Rey’s resolve solidified Ben knew, and they reached for the sabre at the same time. They were evenly matched here as well, and Rey cried again (frustration, anger, want) as Ben’s presence on the Force surged, a night-bright explosion of emotion and will that splashed through the room like ink in a pool of water. 

They both wanted the same thing: the saber. (They both wanted the same thing: a friend.)

Neither of them could have what they wanted. 

The saber split, the Force rending what it had once forged together, and in a burst of light and echoing pain and regret, Rey passed out. 

~~~   
  


_ Gone. Gone, gone, gone. _

Space had never seemed empty before. It had been lonely and vast, but not  _ empty.  _ Kylo had ships that could travel faster than light, he had power and wealth and respect. The idea of space being  _ empty  _ was preposterous, and yet it was. 

It was empty because Rey was no longer at his side. 

She’d left him, and he couldn’t even hate her for it. He knew exactly why she’d gone running back to the cowards and traitors that were her friends because she was  _ still in his head.  _

She feared how much she wanted him, and because of that, he hoped. He could work with her wanting him. For now he’d be as patient as he could, and one by one he’d cut off the Resistance’s means of escape. She’d come to him, one way or another. She could give herself the illusion of choice, or she could let herself be snared by the traps that he’d lay. 

Hux and his lackeys were on the bridge when Kylo strode in. “Supreme Leader.”

He didn’t feel anything other than a bone-deep exhaustion when he heard the title. Once he’d thought it would patch over all his own wounds and hurts and fears. Now it meant nothing compared to the faith of a whiskey-eyed scavenger who’d willingly reached out to touch him.

“Send scouting forces to the outer systems,” said Kylo, watching as a First Order officer began to furiously dictate his orders. “And start tagging our medical supplies with trackers. When the supplies go out, make sure each shipment goes to its proper destination.”

“That will take an incredible amount of man-hours-” Hux began. 

“Then put a droid on it!” said Kylo. 

The Resistance would, in all likelihood, go to ground somewhere. His-  _ Leia  _ had lived with Han Solo long enough to learn a few things, and even a small band of fugitives would need supplies. Their noble, tender hearts likely wouldn’t let them steal from those who couldn’t afford it, so pulling piratical maneuvers against the First Order would become their most likely course of action. When they stole shipments of supplies meant for stations on the outermost planets, he’d catch them. 

“Yes, Supreme Leader,” spat Hux, the way lesser men would hurl black curses. 

Kylo turned on his heel and left. He had research to do. 

Snoke had been obsessed with the history of the Force. He’d scorned both the Sith and Jedi, calling them weak, making jests of their rules and restrictions. “The Force is power,” he’d argued. “And power should not be throttled.” 

Within weeks of his defection Kylo hadn’t cared what Snoke thought. In his experience any power, any moral stance made fools of the authority figures in his life. They couldn’t adapt, couldn’t see clearly, instead viewing everything (even children) through their own flawed and warped beliefs. 

No, Kylo didn’t care about Snoke’s position. He only cared that within Snoke’s private chambers was a collection of Force-related relics like the galaxy had never seen before. Testimonials of the Sith, lessons of the Jedi, records of the long-ancient Force Registration days, scrolls from long-forgotten temples on isolated, remote planets. If Snoke’s collection didn’t have the answers Kylo sought, nothing would. 

Snoke’s personal chambers were dark and empty, the massive bed stripped of everything, even the mattress. It smelled like dead time and sick ambition, and Kylo was quick to gather the artifacts he hoped would hold the answers he needed. 

Before his death, Snoke had claimed that it had been his own power that had connected Rey with Kylo. Supposedly the old creature had known that Rey’s curiosity and power and acceptance would draw Kylo to her, and her to him, and so Snoke had used the Force to link them. Perhaps that was possible. 

Or, maybe, something else was at play. Had two powerful Force users even been selected by the fickle entity that governed soul bonds? Hopefully, soon, he would find out. 

~~~

“I thought Snoke was dead,” said Rey, staring across the bunk (and across the galaxy) at Kylo. It was the first thing that came? to mind, much as she’d blurted out  _ murderous snake!  _

“He is.” This time Kylo was seated at an old fashioned desk, the wood scarred and shiny with age. He had physical books in front of him, as well as scrolls and the old data-readers that required cards and plugs. At his right hand was an empty pad of paper and a pen: Rey stared with blatant interest. 

“Why are we still being connected like this if… he’s dead?” Rey asked. She’d almost sneered,  _ if your master is dead,  _ but after the fight with the guards (and after Kylo’s outstretched hand and earnest plea) she couldn’t bring herself to do it. 

She understood him more than she’d like, this impulsive, impossible man. Loneliness did strange things to the human soul. 

“That’s what I’m trying to find out,” said Kylo, gesturing at the desk. “Ah, you can’t see my surroundings. Snoke collected-”

“No,” Rey interrupted. “I can see your desk.”   
  


One of Kylo’s dark eyebrows rose. “I can see your bed,” he said, as thought he hadn’t noticed until just then. 

(It was tempting to think that he hadn’t noticed the bunk aboard the  _ Falcon  _ because he’d been too busy looking at  _ her. _ Rey scolded herself for being a fool and pushed the idea away.)

“Are you enjoying the filthy ship that was once my father’s?”

“She isn’t filthy and you know it,” Rey snapped. “She’s… broken in. Like boots.” (Not that Rey had ever had any that were truly new, but she’d had footwear that had been new-to-her.)

Kylo waved his hand in the air as if to push her comment aside. “This… being able to see your surroundings. It’s new.”

Rey swallowed, the sound loud in her own ears. “It’s getting stronger,” she whispered, hoping Chewie couldn’t hear her. “This… thing between us.” 

“Yes,” said Kylo, his dark eyes hot. “Rey, you and I-”

She never found out what he’d been about to say. Somewhere, wherever he was, a door had opened and their visual connection had severed. 

Rey lay back in her bunk, the cleanish but threadbare sheets cool beneath her. She liked this tiny, dusty bunk. She liked the smell of the recycled air, like the gentle rumble of the ship as her zero-gravity thrusters engaged. It felt like a home: not hers, of course, but someone’s. The grubby fingerprints on the doorjam began three feet off the floor and only stretched upward, growing as they did. There was an old raincoat hanging on the back of the bunk door, and other little pieces of a long and full life were scattered over the ship.

The ship wasn’t her home, and Rey was beginning to doubt that she’d find one at all. 

As she drifted off to sleep a quiet voice, sounding so much like her own, reminded her that she’d turned down the one home she’d wanted so desperately. He’d have given her everything, Kylo Ren. Riches, feasts, power, knowledge. 

That was alright. She’d learned patience out in the desert sun: she may not have accepted the proposal of Kylo Ren, but she could wait a little longer for Ben. 

~~~

The Force is only that: an energy that connects all living things. It is in the darkness of a predator’s burrow and the light of a clover-filled meadow on a bright and sunny day. It lives in the autumnal death of flowers and the emergence of kits in spring. It is light and dark only in contrast, because energy is energy is energy. 

It’s all movement.

Those who use the Force can channel it, they can store or move it, but they cannot corrupt it. How can you corrupt the force that causes an electron to spin? 

If Rey and Ben had been able to see the Force as it wove its way through the galaxy it would look like a map of lights across a continent that edged into infinity in every direction. Little thin trails of light connecting major hubs of energy trailing across the vastness of space, sparking light into the darkness. 

Luke’s presence on the Force was a sun all his own; the brilliance so great it was nearly painful to look at. 

Leia’s presence was just as strong, but diffused: it reached further and burned more slowly, content to enact changes at the rate of the expansion of the universe: ever reaching, ever striving, never slowing despite the odds. 

( _ Never tell her the odds.) _

Rey’s presence had burned atomic during her ascension on Starkiller, mirrored only by the solar flare of Kylo’s resolve at the base of Snoke’s throne. They changed the map, Rey and Ben, flaring to life in a landscape that had simmer stagnantly for too long. 

And then, spectacularly as the death of a star, Luke’s signature went out. 

He didn’t end in darkness. As the universe held its breath Luke burned more brilliantly than the whitest sun, a final act of faith and hope burning away doubt and despair until 

the joy was all the galaxy could see. 

And then gently, lovingly, the light-map rearranged again. Nothing is still. Nothing can remain without change: time and death come for us all. 

But remember: energy can neither be created nor destroyed, it can only be transformed. As long as the universe spins on, nothing (and no one) is ever really gone. 

~~~

_ Loss.  _

Loss smelled like a wisp of smoke on the wind: a distant cookfire, maybe, one at which Rey had not been given a seat. Or it could be from a far distant fire, destruction that could have no effect on her other than second-hand grief. 

Loss smelled like the salt of Leia’s tears; the pain of her own loneliness mixing with the contentment of her twin’s final resting. 

Loss smelled like the recycled, slightly grubby air of the  _ Falcon  _ as it’s hydraulic hatch sealed shut, cutting  _ Ben  _ (for that’s who he was) away from her view…

Only... he remained. 

_ Rey,  _ he whispered, and slowly, serenely she realized his lips hadn’t moved.  _ Rey  _ he whispered again, kneeling on the cold floor of the dusty Crait base. 

_ I have to go,  _ she told him, not dropping her eyes from his dark, sad gaze. 

_ You don’t,  _ he said.  _ I would never hurt you. Your friends could walk free and we… we could be beyond this. All of us: no First Order, no rebellion. Luke died for that.  _

Rey could hear the sincerity in his words, and that hurt her all the more. 

_ We can’t kill our pasts,  _ she told him, remembering all the tears and blood she’d left on Jakku, all the shame she still carried. She’d been sold by the people who were supposed to love her most. When she’d been most in need, no one had wanted her. No one. Not one person had wanted her with them. It was a worry and a shame she knew she’d carry the rest of her life. 

_ We can’t pretend the past didn’t happen,  _ she told him even as her body felt the ship take off.  _ The past, our old decisions, they made us who we are. We can’t move forward until we face them. You made me face my truth, Ben. Thank you.  _

_ I told you that you were nothing,  _ said Ben, and Rey watched his fingers tighten on the glint of gold obscured by his black-clad fingers.  _ I was wrong. You’re everything, Rey.  _

Rey felt tears pricking at the corner of her eyes as Leia’s hand fell gently on her shoulder.  _ I can’t be,  _ Rey whispered, shy even in her mind, skittering away from the magnitude of their mingled emotions.  _ I can’t be everything for you. I am my own. You helped me face my past, Ben. I’ll help you face yours. Then… then we can build something new.  _

_ My past-  _

She never found out what he’d been going to say. Based on the confusion she could feel pouring from him, Ben didn’t know either. 

**Author's Note:**

> I HAVE RETURNETH TO MY BULLSHITTERY! 
> 
> This is going to be a three chapter view of the sequel trilogy with maaaybe a porny epilogue. We'll see. I haven't written anything non-smutty since 2015 (aka the year the lord abandoned us all for good) so... the odds are not in my favor. 
> 
> A big thank-you to [Hannah](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jensenackals/pseuds/prinecssleia) for being my beta, hype-queen, and thirst buddy. She's absolutely the nicest. If you're looking for something short and atmospheric I recommend her recent Vanity Fair-inspired oneshot, [starcrossed](https://archiveofourown.org/works/18922216).


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